Recruitment
by Jennifer-Oksana1
Summary: An ongoing series focusing on Jack recruiting Wesley, formerly of Angel Investigations, to help him find Sydney. Things get more complicated as it goes on. NEW! Chapter Three!
1. Recruitment

Recruitment  
  
by Jennifer-Oksana (jenniferoksana@yahoo.com)  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Summary: Wesley is recruited for a little job by Jack Bristow, SD6.  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine, will never be mine.  
  
Slow night at the strip club and the lone girl on the catwalk's got lots of wavy dark hair and slow, languorous moves that rank somewhere between goth queen and sheer sex on the floor. Her eyes are focused somewhere near mine while she gyrates to Portishead and I'm wondering, who lets something this damn slow and depressing on the floor of a strip club? Though there's something genuinely erotic about the way she's moving to it, seemingly lost within her own private world of want. It's sexy and I'm impressed. She's a good dancer. But still--Portishead. At a strip club. It smells wrong.  
  
It's only Thursday, I suppose, the day before everything picks up, but I'm no expert in the operation of strip clubs. For example, this one seems remarkably empty for such a posh operation -- while the stage/catwalk is rather bare and flashy, the tables are nicely stained dark wood and the seats are rather too upholstered. This is no two-bit operation, or if it is, it's the best-financed one I've seen.  
  
I watch the girl twist her hips and arch her back while I nurse a whiskey sour and wonder when my contact's going to arrive. I'd gotten the message two days ago that someone was interested in my services and to meet him here at eight-thirty. According to my watch, it's eight-thirty-five and I'm still alone.  
  
If this is Lilah's idea of amusement, I'm going to be very put out.  
  
The girl's arm extends and twists, her wrist rotating in a complicated come- on that looks like it's aimed directly at me, which I suppose it is. There's no one else in the club except for a pair of bored looking drunks that I take to be management and security. I slowly realize she's looking for a tip and so I fumble to find a fiver to give her. She's giving me quite a show, after all.  
  
I hand her the money and she leans forward, giving me an ample view of very nice cleavage. "You're here to talk to my friend," she says, taking the money. "He's over there. Be nice to him or he might blow your head off."  
  
"Thanks for the tip," I say, glancing over to where the stripper is looking and there's my contact, having his own drink.  
  
"No problem," she replies, taking the five. I walk away, pick up my drink, and shortly find myself seated across from someone I've never seen before in my life. I get the distinct sense, however, that he's seen me. More than once.  
  
"I've been told you want to meet," I say tensely. The man takes a drink of his sidecar and I get a good look at him. He's about my father's age or a little younger, grey, civilized -- and without a doubt, he could kill me with his bare hands.  
  
"You're Wyndham-Pryce," he says, not looking up at me. "I have a job for you."  
  
"That's nice," I reply, trying not to have an expression on your face. "Who are you with? I've had poor luck recently with employment offers, so forgive me if I don't accept right away."  
  
"Of course not," the man says, suddenly turning his head to look at the woman onstage with an obscure pain in his eyes. "My name is Jack Bristow. I'm with a small agency very interested in your work."  
  
I swallow heavily. "I won't give you information about Angel Investigations," I say bluntly. Jack blinks, turning back toward me.  
  
"Angel Investiga--oh," Jack says. "The detective agency where you were formerly employed. No, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce, I'm not interested in information about the agency. I am, however, interested in procuring your skills as a translator and expert on occultism."  
  
"I see," I say. "How did you find out about me?"  
  
"Mostly through your interactions with Wolfram and Hart," Jack replies, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "And Ms. Lilah Morgan."  
  
This means, of course, that he knows I'm sleeping with her, but who cares? I'd be surprised if he didn't know.  
  
"You're not with Wolfram and Hart, are you?" I ask, even though I don't believe anything of the sort. "I refuse to work with them."  
  
Jack laughs, if you can call a three-second amused chuckle laughter. "No," he says. "Not with them, either. Though my agency would also be interested in having you possibly work with them for the purpose of information gathering."  
  
Information gathering. That's a fancy phrase for spying on them and I'm still not sure what he's trying to get me to do. I know only two things for certain: I don't trust him, and I don't want to tell him no straight out.  
  
"Mr. Bristow, I'm not sure if I'm interested in your game," I say slowly. "Who are you working for, precisely? Why would they want me to work for them? Since you seem to know so much about me, you must know that the reason I was sacked from my last job involved a kidnapping and my throat being slit."  
  
"Yes, Wesley, I am well aware of that," Jack says slowly, looking me over with professional neutrality that chilled me far more than a sexual look might have. "Come with me and I'll explain everything."  
  
I almost say no, but what's the point of refusing? Besides the fact that I'll be coming with him whether I want to or not, I'm unemployed and slowly succumbing to the boredom and self-recrimination that solitude and alcohol bring. It's either follow Mr. Jack Bristow into the unknown or follow Ms. Lilah Morgan into the known and tawdry.  
  
I stand up slowly, trying not to let the uncertainty show. The nagging feeling that I'm being remarkably naïve won't go away; after all, Jack has only offered me a job and refused to tell me who he's working with. The only thing that makes it worthwhile the possibility of a way out, but that possibility is more than enough to overcome all of my objections.  
  
"If this turns out to be a set-up," I say as we leave the strip club, the air outside dry and redolent with traffic fumes, "I'm going to be very disappointed."  
  
This time the laugh lasts for a good fifteen seconds and has some real humor in it.  
  
"You're going to be very interesting to work with," Jack says. "It's been a while since someone has actually been this paranoid about a job offer with my people."  
  
"I've discovered that a default attitude of distrust is the easiest way to stay alive," I reply. "Where did you find that stripper, by the way?"  
  
Jack's eyes suddenly flash with unrepressed emotion, a crack in the all- business mask. "She's a friend of my daughter's," he says and I know something's gone terribly, horribly wrong with Jack's daughter and that the stripper is not normally a stripper. Everything about this business is as wrong as it's felt from the beginning.  
  
"She's a good dancer," I say clinically. "I was completely fooled."  
  
He nods. "Get in the car, Wesley," he says, pointing to a nondescript silver-black sedan and I know, suddenly, exactly what Jack's agency does. The sedan is a little too government-issue for it to be coincidence.  
  
I get in the car. Jack locks the doors and looks at me.  
  
"You're in intelligence," I say, almost babble, before he can get a word in edgewise. "Who are you with? FBI? CIA? NSA? And why would you need me as a spy?"  
  
"I work for a small section of the CIA known as SD-6," Jack explains. "We've come into the possession of documents written by a man known as Rambaldi and I'd like you to do some work with them, translate, cross- reference, give us everything you've got. If you find the assignment to your liking, there might be a long-term contract involved."  
  
"Involving working with Wolfram and Hart?" I ask.  
  
"Involving a takedown of Wolfram and Hart," Jack corrects me. "As you noticed, I know a lot about you, Wesley. I know why you'd like to see the whole firm gone. You help me out, and I think we can arrange it. Or anything else that you want."  
  
The last sentence disarms me. Jack wants something more than just a little help with the Rambaldi documents from me. It's not sex, it's not information, it's not murder. But he hasn't pulled me into a black sedan for the standard SD-6 recruiting spiel. He wants something from me and he's willing to hand me Wolfram and Hart to get it.  
  
"I think it can be arranged," I say, choosing my words carefully. "What do you want from me, Mr. Bristow? I'm a good translator, but surely Rambaldi is in Latin or Italian -- and I'm hardly the only person in Los Angeles who can translate those languages. I'd like to help you, but I want to know what I'm setting myself up for if I do."  
  
He nods, retreating into himself to find the right way to phrase the answer. I can tell that it's something personal, something that he'd really rather not talk about. It's got to be related to the daughter, but how am I supposed to help Miss Bristow, if it is Miss Bristow?  
  
"You do prophecies, Mr. Wyndham-Pryce," Jack says, dropping back into formality. "You may or may not know it, but you're well-known for it in powerful circles. Rambaldi's prophecies involve my family. I want you to translate the entire prophecy and tell me what I can do to make it not happen."  
  
It's my turn to laugh. Prophecies! All the world wants me to tell them the future -- Angel, Holtz, Lilah, now Jack -- and the voice in my head tells me that knowing the future makes the present impossible, turns living into hell, and that I cannot, I must not tell the future. Telling the future will kill me.  
  
"You can't avoid the future, Mr. Bristow," I say. "I do prophecies, as you say, but the prophecies have a disturbing tendencies to do me right back."  
  
"What are you saying?" Jack asks after a pause with the softest hint of threat in his voice.  
  
"I'll help you," I say wearily. "If only for the chance to escape working for Wolfram and Hart in actuality. I'm just trying to warn you against trying to stop the future, Jack."  
  
He looks at me, back in his secret agent emotionless man state, but I know that it's only a façade now and I can negotiate accordingly. If nothing else, the past few months have taught me the use of exploiting raw emotion, except it's my time to do the exploiting.  
  
"I understand that," he says flatly. "But this is something I have to do. For my daughter."  
  
I bite down on my tongue literally, wanting to explain to him that it's better for his daughter if he doesn't. How do I know? All I have to dissuade him is my own ridiculous experience, naivete rewarded by violence. Jack Bristow doesn't seem naïve. He might be a little sentimental, but there is no doubt in my mind he knows what he's doing.  
  
"All right, then," I say, the fear of one sort of enslavement replaced by another. "I won't just join your little agency, though. I prefer to be a free agent."  
  
He starts the car, laughs again. I've decided I don't like his laugh. There's something broken in it, something I relate to with too much ease. I've been -- or I will be -- just like this man in some ways, if I'm not careful.  
  
"Don't we all," he says as we drive away, not sarcastically or ironically, but matter-of-factly, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Don't we all."  
  
End 


	2. Lessons

Lessons (A Sequel to Recruitment)  
  
Spy training was not precisely what Wesley had expected. He'd expected training with firearms, which had obviously been a large part of it, and rather more martial arts training than he was getting. Maybe something in the art of disguise, which he'd been assured was forthcoming.  
  
He had not expected the part where he'd spend six hours a week working on dancing and deportment with a woman he'd met dancing in a strip club. He possibly would have declined the offer if he'd known, as one thing Wesley knew he couldn't do was dance. But Ashley swore up and down that it was all valuable to his work and he had no choice but to do as she said.  
  
"Makeup smears, latex suffocates, wigs fall off," she said, forcing him to partner her in an absurd routine to horrible, horrible American pop music. "Again!"  
  
"I'm trying!" he gasped, as a bland male voice informed him the freaks sure do come out at night, out at night while the beat behind him went at about the speed of light. "It's fast!"  
  
"It's club music!" she snapped. "And if you haven't realized, most of the best opportunities for operatives to insert is in a club/social setting. You have to blend, white boy, blend! Even if you can't dance! And you can't!"  
  
Faith, who Wesley knew had been a very good dancer, would have had a hard time keeping up with Ashley. Still, she said keep up and he was going to do his damnedest, even if it was to damn Britney Spears. If nothing else, he was going to come out of training with the ability to outdance any of his former friends in public.  
  
"Your disco needs you, Wes!" Ashley snapped. "If you were in the middle of a crowded club, what would you be paying attention to right now?"  
  
"My target?"  
  
"Wrong!" she replied, swirling around into a sudden flamboyant pose. "Why would you need to pay attention to him? You've ascertained his position already, haven't you?"  
  
"He could move," Wes replied, taking her hand and starting the very fast tango she'd initiated. The rudiments of ballroom dancing he'd learned to please his mother had made this much easier, even when they were dancing to a Pepsi commercial.  
  
"Why would he move if he was comfortable? This is his territory, not yours," she said, leaning into Wesley's competent dip. "If he moves, it's your fault."  
  
"That's--"  
  
"What are you paying attention to right now?" Ashley asked, twirling into his embrace with faux passion.  
  
"You," Wesley said. That seemed to be the correct answer and he really couldn't pay attention to much else, not with her ass rubbing up against him quite like that.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because what else would I be paying attention to?" he snapped.  
  
"Exactly!" she said, slowing down and complicating the dance at the same time. "On the dance floor, you are a hot Eurotrash guy on the prowl. That's it. Your partner will keep an eye on the target. You are a Brit with connections in Hong Kong, looking for some fine ass. Your only problem is making sure that your dance partner doesn't decide that your connection in Hong Kong is Jack. Don't lose the beat!"  
  
"Hong Kong?" Wesley asked, absently leading Ashley through the complicated dance. "Why would I go to Hong Kong?"  
  
"Because that's where Sydney is, and once you figure out what the fuck is up with Rambaldi, I know Jack's taking you along for the ride. That is, if he can get the situation with little Will taken care of," Ashley said acidly, breaking away from Wesley and beginning her own dizzyingly rapid improvised dance routine.  
  
"I am *not* keeping up with that," Wesley wheezed, watching her spin and gyrate wildly before throwing herself into an impossibly sensual backbend and snapping up like a stripper on meth. "I don't think it's physically possible."  
  
"Sydney is good because she blends. Nobody thinks a skinny babe is out to steal their data. People think shiftless dudes with no real agenda are there to steal their data," Ashley explained, finally coming to a full stop with a pant. "You're attractive, fairly young, and most importantly, you look like the kind of guy who's out to get some."  
  
"That's--" Wesley said, choking on the words. "That's entirely untrue."  
  
Ashley smiled, looking almost impish in her typical outfit of sports bra, ponytail, and shorts, revealing teeth that could've used a serious cleaning. "Maybe it is and maybe it's not," she said. "It's not important. What's important is that you stay in character, because if you don't raise eyebrows, no one will ask questions you don't have answers for."  
  
Wesley nodded, flicking his eyes toward the doorway. Jack was waiting there, looking typically expressionless. Wesley knew by now that was mostly a front, part of Jack's "character" as Ashley might call it. He also knew Jack was a ruthless son of a bitch, willing to kill at a moment's notice to fulfill his plans. Wesley respected that.  
  
"Here for the prize student?" Ashley asked, strolling across the dance studio and putting her shirt on. "I wore him out using my secret blend of Britney, Kylie, and *nsync."  
  
"Well, that's what we like about you," Jack said. "You're willing to do what it takes."  
  
Ashley laughed, buttoning up her Hawaiian shirt. She'd explained to Wesley that she spent four or five hours a week leading tours in the shirt to explain how she afforded her life as "a dancer." Cover stories, Wesley, she told him, simulating sex in choreographed form to the Neptunes' remix of Britney Spears' "Boys." Cover stories keep us alive.  
  
"That I am," Ashley said. "And just remember, Jack--"  
  
She walked past the older man, brushing him lightly with her arm. Wes was impressed at how playful she was with him, as if he were just another potential conquest. Jack smiled lightly.  
  
"Any time you need dancing lessons, I'm here," she said. "Later, Wes."  
  
"Until next time, Ash," he replied casually, turning to Mr. Bristow calmly as she disappeared down the hallway. "Where are we headed?"  
  
"We're going to SD-6. I think it's time you met a few people," Jack said. "Besides, I have a job for you that I think will be germane to our projects."  
  
Jack was the only person Wesley knew besides himself and Rupert Giles who could use the word germane in day to day conversation and not sound utterly implausible doing so.  
  
"Can you tell me what?" Wesley asked as they walked out of the building and toward Jack's car. "In the general area of what, anyway?"  
  
"I want you to visit a certain former ally of yours in prison," Jack replied without slowing down. It took all of Wesley's skill not to stop dead. Visit Faith? Now? With the stink of his betrayal of Angel still thick in the air? Wesley would be lucky to escape with his skin, and that would be if Faith was in a good mood.  
  
"Of course," Wesley said, the words slow. "I'm not certain she'll be pleased to see me."  
  
"She'll have a reason," Jack said. "You're going to be carrying her release papers."  
  
Wesley nodded, realizing that only a week ago, his eyes would have widened in panic. There was something to all this training, and not just the intensive workouts. But there was the question of release papers, and the knowledge he could not tell Faith where Angel was, even if he had known.  
  
The two men got into the car. "Are you really going to take me to Hong Kong?" Wesley asked as Jack put the car into reverse.  
  
"Probably," Jack replied. "What's wrong, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce? I thought you were looking forward to field work."  
  
Wesley swallowed, but not noticeably. "I am," he said. "However, I'm not sure that I want to get too deeply entangled in another family psychodrama."  
  
Jack nodded. "I understand that," he said. "But you're not actually getting involved. You're simply in a quid pro quo situation, Wesley. You help me, I help you."  
  
"Right," Wesley replied. "And of course, the fact that you'd cheerfully blow my head off if I chose to get un-involved in this situation in no way entangles me, right?"  
  
A slow, bitter smile spread across Jack's face. "Have I ever mentioned I like you, Wesley?" he asked.  
  
"You and quite a few people I don't trust, either," he replied. "It seems as if the only people who do like me these days are dangerous people who need me desperately for private reasons they don't share."  
  
Jack's expression didn't change as they turned a corner, the Credit Dauphine building coming into view. Wesley wondered again why Jack had chosen him, of all the people in Los Angeles, to work with him. There were other people who were cognizant of prophecy, other translators. The only thing remarkable about Wesley was the size and frequency of his failures.  
  
"I like you because I've been you, Mr. Wyndam-Pryce," Jack replied quietly, sliding his card across the slot in the parking machine. "You're not the only one who's failed."  
  
That reminded Wes of what Ash had said about the former Mrs. Bristow, Irina Something-Or-Other. A KGB agent. Sydney's mother. Faked her own death and laughed at how easy it had been to deceive her husband...  
  
Perhaps Jack wasn't wrong about the commonalities between them.  
  
"I'm sorry," Wesley said. "I mean, about the distrust. You understand how it gets to be a habit."  
  
"All too well," Jack replied ruefully. Wesley thought he might say more, but he didn't. Instead he turned the car off awkwardly, running a hand through his hair with a certain familiar weariness. Wesley found himself looking at the other man's hands and wondering. Nothing untoward, just wondering. Angel's hands had been as normal and human as Jack's. One couldn't smell the violence on them. "You'll be meeting Sydney's partner today. Dixon. And our technical wizard, Marshall."  
  
"Are they as inhuman as Sloane?" Wesley heard himself asking, not caring about the answer. I have set my life upon a cast of a die, he thought to himself, watching Jack's hands, and I'm not the one doing the casting. I have trusted my life and my future to this man because I recognized on some level that he knew what it was to fail his loved ones.  
  
"Who could be?" Jack said. "Come on."  
  
Wesley, distracted by the weight of his realization, followed Jack into the building. He was already entangled, he knew, and no matter how Jack swore it was no more than a simple quid pro quo, there was no doubt Wesley was going to be around for a while.  
  
And that was not necessarily a bad thing.  
  
End 


	3. Sydney in Paradise

Sydney in Paradise  
  
by Jennifer-Oksana (jenniferoksana@yahoo.com)  
  
Rating: R, Angst, AU, Series  
  
Website: http://jennyo.imjustsayin.net  
  
Spoilers: post ATY  
  
Feedback: are there really authors who DON'T want feedback?  
  
Archive: CD, list archives, others by permission  
  
Disclaimer: JJ Abrams, Bad Robot, ABC, et cetera. Not me.  
  
Summary: Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, Sydney doesn't sleep. Third in the "Recruitment" series, but this more or less stands alone and is all Alias this time.  
  
There is a whole world enfolded in the confines of Hong Kong; you could spend your entire life there and never find the end of it. The density of life, the array of experience, the variation of sheer humanity per square foot is dizzy-making and should be awe-inspiring.  
  
In a small warehouse with a Buddhist temple on one side and a McDonald's on the other, Sydney Bristow braids her hair and yawns at the very thought of Hong Kong.  
  
Of course, by this point, Sydney Bristow would yawn at the very thought of anything. It has been two weeks, three days, and seven hours since she's gotten more than three hours of sleep at a time. The world is starting to blur into one noisy, neon-laced nightmare where nothing except sleep is very important.  
  
But Irina has murdered sleep the way she has murdered Laura Bristow and Michael Vaughn, and Sydney is resigned (stuck, damned, stubbornly clinging) to being sleepless in the pursuit of keeping her own soul.  
  
It is taking a very. very. long time. to braid her own hair.  
  
Actual escape is well-nigh impossible; Sydney has been allowed to go out into the city, but there are always agents two feet behind. After the closest Sydney has come to ditching her guards and finding a form of contact, Irina (not her mother, this cannot be her mother) kept Sydney up for seventy-two hours straight until Sydney, sobbing like a twelve-year-old girl, promised never to do it again and was promptly given six hours of sleep. That had been three weeks ago, and Sydney daydreams of six hours of sleep during her weak moments.  
  
Not that anyone had laid a finger on Sydney; that is not Irina's style, and especially not with her own flesh and blood. But there is no sleeping when white-hot lights are always focused at your eyes, when sirens wail for two hours straight, stop for thirty minutes, and are replaced by stereos screaming in Chinese, especially when you are expected at every meal on time and ready to speak.  
  
The City of Life never sleeps, and neither does Sydney Bristow.  
  
She could use a haircut; when she gets back to Los Angeles, she'll get one. There is still something stubborn, hopeful, and fully Syd inside of her, believing with all her heart that she will be able to go back to Los Angeles and get a haircut without worries about Irina, Security Section, or anything else. Maybe she'll get Francie to come with her.  
  
"Good morning, Miss Bristow," someone says, echoing in the vastness of the warehouse. "How do we feel today?"  
  
"My chi is off," Sydney says, marveling that she can still be so flippant. "I think that the feng shui in this place is bad."  
  
"You're still very funny," the someone adds. Oh. Sark. Wonderful. Sydney finishes a braid and finds another bit of hair to twist. "Are you listening to me, Miss Bristow?"  
  
"Not really," she says. "You don't listen to me, I don't listen to you. It's a vicious cycle."  
  
"I completely agree," Sark replies. "We're going out tonight. You look like you could use some excitement, and your mother agrees with me."  
  
She glares at him, pretending to be annoyed at his little games. Sydney knows that she looks like she could use a week asleep. But there is going out, and that means the possibility of losing the goons in the crowds for just long enough to get a message to somebody -- anybody -- she doesn't care who. At this point, K-Directorate could pick her up and as long as it wasn't Irina and her flunkies, Sydney would be delighted.  
  
"That would be lovely, thanks," she spits out, sounding about as happy as she should.  
  
"I'll see you in a few hours, then," Sark says, and Sydney wonders if her hairdresser will know how to get the miasma of creep out of her hair. She's going to need it.  
  
Of course, he takes her to the club she went to with Vaughn. It is so very much like him, and if Sydney wasn't hoping this little charade was going to work, she'd try to hurt Sark. But there's not really time for that. She has to look beaten, and she has to want to look genuinely interested in actually being on the dance floor.  
  
It would be easier if she wasn't off her game from all the sleep deprivation, but she'd been trained to handle situations like this and like Ashley said, no one ever suspects the skinny babe of being as capable as she actually is. Even if Sark is smarter than the average target.  
  
"I want something to drink," Sydney says. "If I'm out, I might as well have fun."  
  
Sark nods curtly. "I'll go get it for you. Don't go anywhere."  
  
Sydney smiles. "Where would I go? This place is crawling with your people, Sark."  
  
"Exactly, Miss Bristow."  
  
He walks away and Sydney stands up, rolling her head back and forth while she looks around to see who's working tonight and who's unaware that this is not exactly a normal dance club. Most people here are on Irina's payroll, and she notices someone who's clearly a newbie with some agency or other; she's thinking K-Directorate. She can't go play with him, he's obvious. He's probably going to die tonight.  
  
But that means he probably has someone else.  
  
some. one. else.  
  
Oh.  
  
Yay. Maybe. Definitely. Yay.  
  
Sark is coming back with her drink. But oh, yay. She's got someone who's going to make it worth the seventy-two hours she's going to be awake this time.  
  
"Thanks," she says. Her eyes are burning and her head is pounding. "What is it?"  
  
"I don't know," Sark says. "I asked the bartender to make something nice and strong for a lady friend."  
  
It would be drugged, then. Sydney considers the drink, takes a sip, and doesn't even make a face. It's some combination of schnapps, vodka, and rohypnol. How very considerate of Sark, realizing how little sleep she's gotten.  
  
"Thanks, but I think I'll save it," Syd says. "Let's go out there, mix with all the nice people my mother has put on the dance floor to protect me."  
  
Sark looks like he's going to protest, but then he sees the obvious K- Directorate agent and he think he knows the game. Sydney gives him a slick little smile, like she's getting away with it.  
  
There are too many layers for a tired woman to deal with, but she's dealing with it anyway. Because she needs to get out of here. She needs to sleep or not sleep, just find oblivion at the bottom of a cocktail, whatever. She needs to be out of Hong Kong, dead or alive, it doesn't matter.  
  
Dead, she can sleep.  
  
Sark doesn't dance well. He hasn't had any training in it at all, and Sydney can move circles around him, pretending to be into him and pretending to focus her attention on the new boy. That way, Sark is all about the boy and not about the real rescue squad, even though he has to know new boy is too new not to have at least one backup, probably two.  
  
Sydney is dancing. She isn't going to make a move toward her one shot out of this place; she's going to believe that Anna owes her for the shit she pulled in South America. Well, Anna doesn't owe her anything, but they have a sort of bond. And Anna wouldn't want to be in Syd's position for the world.  
  
Sydney is dancing, and the beat is drilling holes in her brain. Sark is going to get suspicious soon, because she's so tired she could die from exhaustion right here right now. But she's got to go on like the beat goes on yeah yeah yeah yeah.  
  
Sydney is dancing, and she feels someone brush against her. Girl someone, slides between her and Sark like that's her destiny. Strong girl, nice calves, svelte and muscular. Can't believe Sark doesn't recognize her, but that's all right, this has to be fast.  
  
Sydney is dancing, and she's got her hand in another woman's skirt. Anna is amused. She thinks. Fuck if Syd knows anything anymore. She wants to sleep. She wants to go home. She wants Vaughn not to be dead.  
  
Anna slides away and Sydney doesn't know if it's gonna work or not. Sark is standing there and he's not dancing anymore.  
  
"We're going home," he says, or at least, that's what his lips say.  
  
"I want to finish my drink first," Sydney replies. "Then we can go."  
  
She turns away from him, walking up to the platform with her drink and the longest sleep she's going to get until she's out of this fucking town, the City of Life, Hong Kong chop suey. Sydney is going to paradise, the land of sleep, sandman central -- if just for this night.  
  
The first two gulps are down her throat when Sark knocks the glass out of her hand. "We're leaving, Miss Bristow," is all he says.  
  
Sydney yawns. "Whatever."  
  
"We're going to have that woman killed."  
  
"Whatever," Sydney replies.  
  
"She's not going to let you sleep, you know," Sark says as they wobble out of the club, the lights turning into multicolored blurs as Sydney starts to lose her grip on consciousness.  
  
"I'll get a little, though," Syd whispers. "That's all I want."  
  
She slips into darkness, the world finally letting go and leaving her to the oblivion inside her head. If Sark is cursing, she doesn't know it. There is sleep now -- and it is sweet.  
  
End 


End file.
